A new online tool to help fleet operators (delivery fleets, taxi fleets, carsharing fleets, etc) decide when it makes economical sense to switch to electric vehicles (EVs) has been developed by researchers at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR).
The new tool — created under the I-CVUE (Incentives for Cleaner Vehicles in Urban Europe) EU project — is intended to aid in the process of calculating costs/savings per vehicle. The software is free to use after a registration process.
“In order to create the best possible basis for making decisions, we considered a wide range of criteria and assumptions,” stated Christoph Schimeczek, who manages the project at the DLR site in Stuttgart. “These include, for example, incentives such as tax breaks and depreciation options, as well as assumptions about changes in petrol and electricity prices, repair, maintenance, and insurance costs, and the total mileage and spread of the mileage throughout the year.”
The options are there to either work completely within a predetermined reference data set or to customize to fit specific circumstances.
“Compared to other offerings, our program enables a very detailed assessment. At the same time, the underlying suppositions are transparent for the user and can be customized as required,” noted a DLR researcher. “The evaluation is available in Germany, as well as the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Austria and Spain. Norway and France will soon be included as well.”
The workers behind the new tool are continuing to work on the software involved — intending to improve it so that various different funding options can be compared easily, and so that indirect incentives (bus lane use, etc) can be factored in.
“In this way, depending on local factors, decision-makers in government and public authorities can work out what measures promise the greatest success for developing electromobility and thus benefit from existing experience,” stated Schimeczek.
The new online tool can be found here.
Image Credit: Nissan